The Races at Eridanus
It is important to note that, even after the events of the Omni-Strigoi Wars, a Cathedral Ship is still considered one of the most dangerous military targets in known space. Enough resources and ISK are invested in the armor plating alone on most Cathedrals to produce multiple top of the line supercarriers for a more conventional military, and the Strigoi invest as heavily into weaponry and active defenses as well. Realistically speaking, no ship that engages a Cathedral Ship at close range can be expected to survive. When the Omni fleets retook the Eridanus system, it was not through superior naval power. The key to the undoing of the Strigoi fleet lay in the existing Omni infrastucture left in the Eridanus system. Autonomous listening posts, communications stations, the system's intranet, all were slowly and methodically adapted by Omni agents over the course of decades to monitor and penetrate the Strigoi networks, with the long term goal of compromising a Cathedral Ship VI, while at the same time the corporation was developing and training a specialized task force to take back the system. When all preparations were complete, the compromised VI was made to simulate a power core failure and request the assistance of the other Cathedral Ships in the system, who normally maintain considerable distances from one another out of mutual distrust and self preservation instinct. Once OTAF's ruse had successfully concentrated the Cathedral Ships into a 1000 kilometer area the Omni subfleets revealed themselves and engaged. The composition and methods of each subfleet was tailored to individual Cathedral Ships but the overarching strategy was to surround each Cathedral and keep them separate from eachother by at least 33 kilometers. At this distance Omni vessels could support eachother but the Cathedrals were effectively fighting alone. At great cost the Omni fleet herded the Strigoi ships into a pack traversing the equator of Eridanis Opifex, readily sacrificing ships to prevent a Cathedral from breaking away from the planet to minimum FTL distance, landing, or to get close enough to eachother for a combat formation. This was the beginning of the Races, a long running battle with nowhere to go but forward in laps around E. Opifex. Despite the near-flawless execution of the Omni fleet maneuvers, there was never any intent to kill the Strigoi through naval force. Seeded throughout the corpse belt surrounding E. Opifex were O-223 Special Forces, laying in wait for the fleet to flush the Strigoi toward them and drift into the path of the oncoming Cathedrals. The same defenses that so effectively halted missile attacks on the Strigoi also made approaching via boarding craft impractical, but passively boarding the Cathedrals while the defense systems prioritizes Omni incoming fire proved to be succesful. Omni has still not disclosed how many O-223 casualties were accrued during the onboard fighting, but one statistic has been released: 796,431. That's how many men, women, and children were rescued from the liveblood holds that would have been lost had the Cathedrals been destroyed by a conventional naval engagement. Category:OT-Corporate Category:Omni-223 Category:Strigoi Category:Conflicts